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Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

I've seen several references in the Eberron sourcebooks to paying taxes, but not any rates or tables for the actual amounts.

Am I overlooking something obvious?

Are they deeply hidden?

Or are they just non-existent?

At a guess, they're not meant to be mechanical in a hard-and-fast way. If you think it's appropriate for PCs to have to pay taxes, the books might have some suggestions as to who might be taxing them and why, but there probably aren't specific numbers for it.

This is all just conjecture on my part. I haven't read the parts in question, at least not in a long time.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Adventurers are, famously, heavily armed murderous hobos who show no respect whatsoever to anyone who isn't in their clique of 4-6 similarly minded individuals. They poke around in terrifically dangerous caves and crypts on the off chance that one of their might contain treasure, slaughtering any creature that objects to this behavior.

Once successful, they break open chests full of archaeological treasures like piggy banks, and refuse to spend their ill-gotten gains on housing, food, or anything but weapons, armor, and magical items. They treat being reminded to eat and bathe as nuisance bookkeeping, have a statistically unlikely probability of being orphans, and regard entire species that consider them to be mortal foes as "cannon fodder".

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

It depends of if they have a place of residence. Most adventurers probably don't, and wander from country to country. In addition, let me ask you, "Do you have to pay taxes if you find a 20$ bill on the ground?"

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Originally Posted by Hashmir

When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.

Originally Posted by Bloodgruve

Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

@Connington Thank you for that laugh, and it brings up a good point. We can't think of taxation in the traditional sense in terms of applying to adventurers. In a game I am in now, the Duke of the area actually formed an office, the Office of Adventuring and Dungeoneering (it's basically the DMV), which specifically deals with both licensing adventurers, and handling adventuring contracts. All adventurers have to be licensed (which includes a fee), and in order to complete the licensing process they have to join an adventuring guild. Each guild has to have a guild hall and lodging for members (which it pays property taxes on), as well as paying a fee to remain an official adventuring guild. In turn, the guilds make their money by taking some of the spoils of their members, when their members complete contracts given by the guild. If a person wants to hire adventurers, they go to the OAD, which in turn gives the contract to a guild (it seems like it is only one guild that gets each contract, so presumably they bid over them), and then the guild members can find the contracts in the guild halls. Adventurers accept the contract, go do their thing, keep the loot and also get a fee for the contract (which the OAD actually pays half of, since the Duke wants people to be willing to hire adventurers if they are in trouble).

My point is, trying to tax adventurers directly would probably be difficult to implement and probably pointless, much like it would have been pointless for feudal lords to try to take taxes from each individual person, rather than simply taking a share of the harvest.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

When we are talking 10% of your annual wheat harvest, it works well. But PC wealth quickly skyrockets to stratospheric levels compared to the rest of mundane society. Even a tenth part of PC wealth would quickly be a silly value compare to the operating budget of any mundane pursuits.

I'm assuming here you register adventuring Parties rather than individuals since solo adventure's have a name where I'm from. "Lunch"

A 15th level part's taxes at 10% would be 20k, which is enough cash to break the economy of a small city.

It's also enough money to raise and feed a small army 300-400 men depending on the quality of gear. If I were your PC's I'd be tempted to spend my tax money on starting my own kingdom and daring Duke Tightfisted to come and try to collect some taxes off me.

the flip side of that is of coruse, a realistically low value is going to quickly be low enough that PC's tend not to care at all. When dues are a GP a year (Quite high on a mundane budget) PC's tend to buy memberships by the decade.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Originally Posted by Madara

It depends of if they have a place of residence. Most adventurers probably don't, and wander from country to country. In addition, let me ask you, "Do you have to pay taxes if you find a 20$ bill on the ground?"

Exactly. Even those adventurers who do claim residences probably take the stance of "You can have your taxes when you pry them from my cold dead hands."

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Originally Posted by deuxhero

Ah screw that then. I'm brave enough to take on the that Ancient Red Dragon, but the DMV? No thank you.

Although it's implied we wait in line for a long time each time, we use the magic of "We go to the OAD and collect our check. Does anything interesting happen?" To which the DM invariably replies "No." And then we get on with other stuff.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Exactly. Even those adventurers who do claim residences probably take the stance of "You can have your taxes when you pry them from my cold dead hands."

Those adventures happen to be Necropolitan

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Originally Posted by Hashmir

When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.

Originally Posted by Bloodgruve

Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Originally Posted by Marnath

Exactly. Even those adventurers who do claim residences probably take the stance of "You can have your taxes when you pry them from my cold dead hands."

Also, very few adventurers will buy a cottage on market street. They're all going to have, like, floating cubes of ice suspended over the Chasm of Gar'Nicheg or something where it would require a small army (or one man with a long ladder) just to reach the front door.

That said, with most adventurers being Good, they'd happily contribute to the country by killing a dragon here or stopping the imminent destruction of the world there. They're probably on first name terms with the king, to be honest.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Good PCs will abuse the trap rules just to mess with the Tax collectors, causing an entire war between them and the country once the country realizes they have 50,000gp(Think of that in NPC terms...)

Fighter:"Hey guys, another tax collector is walking up to the door again."
Cleric:"Don't worry we'll---"
Kobold Artificer "Wait for it..."

NPC "My eeeyes! What? I can't hear anything either? Help! Help!"

Blindness/Deafness trap ftw*

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Originally Posted by Hashmir

When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.

Originally Posted by Bloodgruve

Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

If you're wondering who the tax collectors are, the Coin Lords are pretty much the top dogs in that area from what I've seen in DDO. Once, you get hired by a member of them to collect some guy's overdue taxes for him.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

that... would actually make for a very fun session if the party was Chaotic...

Indeed. You could have a whole campaign based on escaping taxes

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Originally Posted by Hashmir

When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.

Originally Posted by Bloodgruve

Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Originally Posted by Augmental

If you're wondering who the tax collectors are, the Coin Lords are pretty much the top dogs in that area from what I've seen in DDO. Once, you get hired by a member of them to collect some guy's overdue taxes for him.

Stormreach is one city in the absolute middle of nowhere, as far as Eberron civilization is concerned.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Exactly. Even those adventurers who do claim residences probably take the stance of "You can have your taxes when you pry them from my cold dead hands."

"There are two things in life that are certain: death and taxes."

Originally Posted by Slipperychicken

I guess this forum is some kind of mystical afterlife for dnd nerds who die during internet discussions? All the greatest internet heroes argue here every day about physics and dnd, rise again when slain, and enjoy a dining hall which serves them unlimited quantities of heavenly food like ramen, soda, alcohol, and birthday cake.

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

Yes, the underwear of my epic wizards are more than capable of conquering your average world on their own.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Even better, first the local taxmaster sends the heroes out to collect some money from a few goblins in the woods, then as soon as they receive their just reward:

"Ah thanks for taking the overdue taxes from the goblins. 100 gps and like agreed you will receive half of it."
[party turns to leave]
"Mhm... wait a minute. Are you registred taxpayers somewhere? No? Oh by the word of my lord you're now citizens of his realm and therefore have to pay taxes."
[appraisecheck]
"Now all your magic items and the gold in your pockets sums up to roundabout 150,000 gps and a tenth will go to your new rightful ruler the king"
[Guards surround the party]
"Do you prefer to pay in gold or platinum?"

Bonuspoints if it is a good kingdom and a paladin (or something lawfull) in the party.

Last edited by Bouregard; 2012-04-08 at 08:44 AM.

Two rules get you through life:
1. If it's stuck and it's not supposed to be, WD-40 it.
2. If it's not stuck and it's supposed to be, duct tape it

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

As much as I tend towards simulationism I wouldn't ever bother taxing the average adventuring party except maybe with tolls. Taxes in pre-modern states were mostly on land and trade, things most adventurers don't bother with. There's no personal income tax or a property tax that covers the stuff you carry on your person. If there's a tax on the trade of magic items one can assume that's covered by the 50% you loose from selling them.

Of course what constitutes a legitimate authority and reasonable taxation was probably much more vague back then. Some robber knight might exact a toll that amounted to theft on the people traveling on his road. Arbitrary taxation, or even just slightly more taxation, was also a pretty good recipe for revolt.

So if the adventurers are suddenly faced with a tax collector that demands 10% of their stuff even the lawful members might consider that unjust as a breach of accepted norms. Any DM that had his NPCs make that demand should also expect a battle.

If however your adventurers actually own land or property you might have to start thinking about what they should pay or whether they might be exempt as clergy or nobility and what other services they might then be obliged to render.

Re: Eberron: paying taxes?

Originally Posted by Ormur

If however your adventurers actually own land or property you might have to start thinking about what they should pay or whether they might be exempt as clergy or nobility and what other services they might then be obliged to render.

Does this mean that a cleric of Gruumsh would be exempt from any retribution after performing blood sacrifices because he would claim benefit of the clergy and be tried in an ecclesiastical court of Gruumsh?